The undertaker and his assistants followed when
the funeral assembly dispersed. Mrs. Tregenza was about to depart in the
fly specially ordered to take her home when a lawyer, who was of the
company, begged she would stay a little longer.
"I learn that you are the deceased's stepmother, madam, and as you stand
related to the parties both now unhappily swept away by Providence--I mean
Thomas Tregenza and Joan--it is sufficiently clear that you inherit
directly the bequest left by the poor girl to her brother. I framed her
little will myself; failing her own child, her property went to Thomas
Tregenza, his heirs and assigns--those were the words. The paper is here;
the sum mentioned lies at interest of three per cent. Let me know when
convenient what you would wish to be done."
So the pile of money, at a cost terrible enough, had reached Mrs. Tregenza
after all. She had been drinking brown sherry as well as tea, and was in a
condition of renewed tears approaching to maudlin, when the announcement
reached her. It steadied the woman. Then the thought that this wealth would
have been her son's made her weep again, until the fact that it was now her
own became grasped in her mind. There is a sort of people who find money a
reasonably good support in all human misfortune, and if Mrs. Tregenza did
not entirely belong to that callous company, yet it is certain that this
sudden afflux of gold was more likely to assuage her grief than most
things.
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